


The ghost of the wagon

by ThisCat



Series: Transcendence AU [5]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Alternate Universe - Transcendence, Dipper Pines is dead, F/M, Gen, Without the demons this time, and it is apparently better that way, at least ghosts don't really live forever, ghost story, they sure are creepy though, yet another au-ception
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-30
Updated: 2016-05-05
Packaged: 2018-06-05 13:28:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 9,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6706228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThisCat/pseuds/ThisCat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>TAU, as we know it, is the story of a What If, as are all its offshoots. It is a large and diverse world, within which you can play, and ask questions.</p><p>What if Dipper became a demon? What if Mabel died young, or Dipper never got the chance to grow up with his family? What if Mabel became a demon? What if both of them did together? What if Stan became a demon? Or Pacifica, sometime down the line?</p><p>…what if no one did?</p><p>What if, the day of transcendence, Dipper Pines simply… died?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The death of Dipper Pines

**Author's Note:**

> At time of writing, this story isn't finished. Despite this, I will endeavour to post one chapter a day for the next few days, as a way to fight my writer's block. If I fail, I fail. Don't shout at me for that. And yes, I know we already have too many auceptions for this thing. Deal with it.

The explosion happened exactly as they had known it would. Dipper sat in the middle of it, not because he wanted to, but because he had no other choice. There was no cosmic coincidence to cause him to survive it, and so, Dipper Pines died, leaving nothing left for the demon to use. Bill fell apart minutes later, having no last-ditch opportunity for survival.

Dipper Pines died at twelve, but he had unfinished business, and he came back soon enough. And so it was that a week later, Mabel went back home with her parents, and her brother came with. Not alive, and definitely not as a demon of unimaginable power, but present, and that would have to be enough.

\---

There was a funeral. It was very nice. Everyone cried.

Mabel went back to school, and she brought her brother with her. She kept introducing him to people. She never denied that he was dead, or that she was the only one who could always see him clearly, (some never saw him. For some there was at times a cold spot in the air, a blurry figure at the edge of their vision, sometimes the smell of burnt skin and pine trees. Those with the Sight often saw him with massive burn scars and horrible injuries, missing an eye and hands burned to the bone, but otherwise there seemed to be no rhyme or reason to who could and could not see. Once in a rare while, they met someone who saw him clearly more often than not.) but she never acted as if he was not present. Because he was always there, at her side.

They all knew that Mabel Pines was haunted, and that they should stay away from her, but she never minded. At least she never let it show that she minded. Some nights she stayed awake to hold onto him, and she cried into his cold chest and he stroked her hair with icy fingers until she was done. She learned to handle the cold. At least she still had him. At least she still had him, and she would not trade him for a million friends.

He only wanted to stay with her.

\---

Their parents let it go on for a year. They figured he would pass on sooner or later, and honestly, they were too caught up in the grief of losing a child to think too much about it. Until then, they tried not to mind being haunted too much. They hardly ever got to really talk to him, or even see him, but there was the way rooms went cold all of a sudden, the moving shadows, the blurry figure at the corner of their eyes, the feeling of being watched, the scribbled notes from nowhere in strange places, which made them feel like they were in the middle of a horror movie.

But he showed no signs of wanting to pass on, and Mabel spoke as if he was going to stay forever, and they… worried.

They brought it up for the first time just a year after the Transcendence. That maybe they should find someone who could… help? Someone who could talk him through it, and help him pass on?

Mabel threw a fit. She refused to even think about it, even consider for a moment to talk to someone who would take her brother away from her. It was not like he ever did any harm, right? All he was, was creepy, and cold, and still twelve while she was fourteen. There should be nothing wrong with him sticking around.

(The school started putting wards against ghosts around rooms during tests, because they realized he helped her cheat on them.)

It took them another year to bring it up again, and she shut them down just as hard, but they kept saying it, kept hinting, kept mentioning that maybe- maybe it was time to… move on? She refused to listen. Every time.

It was just shy of three years past transcendence that the final confrontation blew up in their faces.

There was shouting. So much shouting, and Mabel demanded to know why they wanted him gone so much anyways, and Mark finally blew up and shouted that he hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in three years, and he couldn’t live in the same house as an actual ghost. Anna started crying. Dipper flickered the lights off in the entire house.

Two weeks after that, the twins were on their way back to Gravity Falls. For good this time.

\---

Five years later, one Henry Corduroy moved to town.


	2. First encounters

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let's get into the swing of things.

Parties were not really Henry’s thing. He liked spending time with people, sure, and he could enjoy a good drink and some dance music, but too much of a good thing could make you nauseous and awkward. The only reasons he was still there were that he had promised Wendy he would try to get to know people, he had no idea how he was going to get home, and, well, people-watching was a lot of fun in this town, even at parties.

Among the normal drunk twenty-somethings and teenagers were all manner of creatures. The music, he had quickly discovered, was provided by a quintet of rave-dancing unicorns. The living room was full of über-macho minotaurs, the chandelier was full of gnomes, and other assorted preternaturals mingled seamlessly with the crowd.

For a few moments, Henry had even thought he had seen a child. Not a small child, just preteens, maybe even early teens. He looked both out of place and just as awkward as Henry felt. Henry was just about to ask someone about it when he noticed how the kid weaved seemingly unnoticed between people, as if they could not see him. And then they locked eyes for a second, and the kid looked like a deer trapped in headlights, and Henry looked away, embarrassed to be caught staring, and when he looked back, the kid had vanished.

That had been three hours ago, and since then, everyone he had seen looked old enough to at least pretend they were allowed to be drinking. He did not mention the kid to anyone, just took it as another peculiarity of his new home, and now he was standing against a wall, thinking he should try evacuating to somewhere a little more quiet, and the kid came back.

Or, he was back, anyways. He never really came from anywhere, just stood there suddenly, right in front of him. Staring.

He looked almost remarkably normal, with shorts, a blue vest, and a trucker hat with a pine tree on it, and he had a plastic cup seemingly forgotten in his hands. His expression was empty though, just blank and staring, unblinking. It was starting to creep Henry out.

“Um, hello?” he tried, and the kid broke into a smile and looked down.

“Hi,” he said, and he kept glancing up at Henry and looking back down as if he was shy.

Henry tried a smile.

“Aren’t you a little young to be here?”

The kid shrugged.

“I’m here with my sister. Besides, it’s not like I’m drinking anything. This is just water,” he said, and held up the cup to show.

“Oh, okay,” Henry said, and fell into an awkward silence.

After a bit more glancing up and down, the kid bit his lip and asked, “You’re Henry, right? Wendy’s cousin?”

“Uh, yeah. You?” he said, and held out a hand.

The kid looked at his hand, but made no move to take it.

“Dipper,” he said. “Dipper Pines, nice to meet you.”

Henry took a hint and dropped the hand.

“It’s more quiet upstairs, you know,” Dipper said.

“Huh?”

“Upstairs. It’s quieter. You seem like you could need that.”

“I don’t know where the stairs are, though.”

“I’ll show you. Come on.”

Dipper started walking through the crowd, and waved at Henry to follow him, and Henry followed.

Whatever else Dipper was, he was _fast_ , moving through the crowd as easily as if the room had been empty, almost as if he could pass right through the people there. He had to stop and wait every ten steps or so to make sure Henry kept up.

It was while he was excusing himself through the crowd that Henry noticed the noise level in the room. People were shouting at each other to be heard, even if they stood right beside each other, and he had to wonder how he and Dipper had been able to keep such a relatively quiet conversation without problems. Then he crashed into a woman on accident, and lost his train of thought apologizing to her.

It really was a lot quieter upstairs, and the air was better as well. Henry leaned against the wall of the hallway, and Dipper settled against the opposite one. After a few minutes of closing his eyes to recover from rave-music-induced hearing loss, Henry looked up to find him staring again, unblinkingly.

“Um…” he said, and Dipper blinked the life back into his eyes.

“Oh, sorry, was I doing it again?” he asked.

“The- um… yes. Does that happen a lot?”

Dipper looked down and shrugged.

“All the time, some days. Just tell me if I start. It’s okay.”

Henry nodded, and smiled at him. He probably had some issues, but he seemed like a good kid.

“So you’re… a librarian, right? Wendy told us you were,” Dipper said after a while.

“Yes, just started working at the town library a month ago actually. You like books?”

“Do I like books?” Dipper said, the same way one might say ‘is the sky blue’. “Well, for one thing I literally live in a library. My sister and I live together with our Grunkle Stan at the Stanley Pines Memorial Library, the greatest store of supernatural literature in the world.”

“Wait, did he name it in memory of himself?”

“It’s… kind of a joke. He might have faked his death once. _Anyways,_ ” he continued, before Henry could say another word, “I’ve read practically everything in there, and I might have built myself my own private library over the years, but I’ve read all of those too, and books get expensive after a while. So I figured, if you work there, maybe I could drop by every once in a while?”

He looked so hopeful. So honestly big-eyed and happy at the thought of going to the library of all things, that Henry had to smile.

“Of course you can. The library’s open for anyone, you know. What kind of books do you like?”

And Dipper lit up like the sun.

It turned out that even though he had been rather shy and soft spoken, once he got to talking about books, it was hard to make Dipper shut up, and even though Henry still had an instinctive _what are you doing talking about this in public your dad’s gonna kill you,_ he found himself pulled in by Dipper’s enthusiasm. For being so young, he had a surprisingly nuanced opinion about a lot of stories, and at several points in the conversation, Henry wished he had drunk less earlier that night, if only to follow the more interesting trains of thought closer. It was all in all one of the most enjoyable conversations he could remember having.

He had no idea whatsoever how much time had passed when he heard footsteps and a voice coming up the stairs.

“Dippersauce! I should’a known you’d be up here.”

Dipper stopped in the middle of a sentence and looked towards the stairs, just in time for the most beautiful woman Henry had ever seen in his life to walk up.

He missed the next few lines of conversation between the two, because he was too busy trying not to stare at this sequined angel who had to be Dipper’s sister, and hoping he looked okay. He only managed to snap himself out of it when Dipper said his name.

“Henry? This is my sister, Mabel. Mabel, Henry.”

“Hi,” she said, and reached out a hand as she smiled widely. “It is _nice_ to meet you.”

Henry realized his mouth was open, and closed it. Then he swallowed, and managed a “hi” back.

Dipper left to get his sister a glass of water. Neither of them noticed that he gave them a knowing smile on leaving, or that he stayed gone.

Henry woke up the next day with a hangover, several new friends and a date.


	3. A day at the library

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a warning, the trend of each new chapter doubling the word count is not going to continue.

Dating Mabel Pines was the most fun Henry could remember having in his life. Even setting aside the fact that she was gorgeous, and funny, and nice, and Henry’s dream woman in every way he had no idea he wanted, there was never a boring day with her around. She knew everyone in town, and everyone in town knew her. She knew the strange and uncanny woods of Gravity Falls like the back of her hand, and she brought him along for trips out there frequently. She showed him things he was sure even the general population of this town almost never saw, and she told him about many of her myriads of encounters with things and creatures and people. About half the time, her little brother was around as well.

Had it been anyone else, Henry would probably have been at least a little annoyed to have a twelve-year-old tagging along on his dates, but with Dipper, it felt… natural.

For one thing, the kid seemed at times almost physically attached to his sister. On those days, he was often staring more often than not, and could be almost entirely unresponsive, only reacting slowly whenever Mabel addressed him. On those days, he never spoke, only clung to his sister as if she was his lifeline, and she stroked his head and let him, acting more like a mother than a sister. The first time it happened, she gave Henry a stare that quietly dared him to say anything. He was pretty sure he won quite a few points in her favour when he accepted it without question.

There were bad days and there were good days, though, and those were only the really bad ones. On most days, Dipper talked, and on some days, he acted almost completely normal. Henry quickly realized that the quiet staring at the party had been a level or two of weirdness above what Dipper was at his best. He also realized that Dipper was rapidly becoming one of his favourite people. The two had remarkably much in common, and on the days when Dipper could speak freely, they talked a lot. Henry got the impression that Dipper did not have as many people to talk to as he should. A couple times, Henry had come up to the former Mystery Shack with the intension of spending a day with Mabel, and realized two hours later that he had spent the whole time talking to her brother instead.

It took about a month after his first meeting with the siblings before he spent a day with Dipper on his own.

It was an early Tuesday morning, Henry was just about to head to work, and Dipper stood waiting by his car.

“Dipper?” he asked, and the kid looked up and fidgeted.

“Hi,” he answered.

“Um… what are you doing here?”

“Well…” more fidgeting, “so, Mabel is out with the girls today, and I wouldn’t know what to do if I came along, and Stan can’t- he’s working, and I’m bored out of my mind, and I figured- I mean, maybe- Do you think I could come with you today?”

Henry hesitated, trying to figure out what to say while unlocking the door of the car.

“Don’t you have school or something?”

Dipper looked down and shook his head, and oh. That was the wrong thing to say. Definitely the wrong thing. Well, why not bring him along for the day?

“Does Mabel know you’re here?”

Dipper nodded, and Henry opened the door on the passenger side.

“Jump in then.”

And they drove together in towards town.

As they drove, Henry glanced over at the kid in the passenger seat. Dipper looked out the window and fidgeted with his seatbelt, the small movements a sure sign of a very good day for him. He probably had some sort of diagnosis, but Henry had never felt the need to ask. Dipper was Dipper, with both the good and the bad, and it seemed like it was being dealt with well enough, but there were other questions, because the Pines family was strange in so many ways, and no one ever seemed to want to talk about it.

Dipper turned his head as if he had felt him looking.

“Henry?”

Henry looked back at the road with a blush.

“Sorry. I was just thinking about something.”

“Thinking about what?”

“Just wondering, you know. I-” he glanced over at Dipper again, and Dipper looked back with nothing but honest curiosity, “I don’t want to assume, but I don’t want to be rude either, and I don’t really know how to ask?”

Dipper hmm’d a bit.

“You… could just ask. And then, if I don’t want to answer, I just won’t. Yeah?”

“That works,” Henry smiled. “So, you and Mabel, you don’t live with your parents?”

“No, they’re in California.”

“Can I ask why?”

Dipper hesitated a little, biting his lip and looking out the window, and Henry was just about to ask if that was a bad question when he answered.

“There… was a bit of trouble, okay? I mean, it’s not like there’s anything wrong with them or anything, they’re alright parents, but… they’re not very good with all the supernatural stuff, and we’re kind of… around… that a lot. And then, when we- when Mabel was sixteen, they kind of had a big fight over it and we ended up moving up here instead.”

Henry nodded. He was pretty sure he had just gotten the shortened and abridged version of a much longer and much more personal story, but it was still more than he had before, and he appreciated it. He tried not to think about how young Dipper would have been five years ago, or how bad a situation like that must have been for a child with a condition like his, whatever it was.

“So…” he said, trying to find a way to word his next question better. “I get that there are some things you don’t want to tell me. Probably some important things, too. I was just wondering why, exactly, you’re so worried about me finding out.”

He met Dipper’s eyes for a few seconds, though he had to look back to the road quickly, and the silence stretched on.

“I suppose it’s a hard question…” he said.

“No,” Dipper answered, “or, yes, but… I guess it’s- I’ve only known you a few months, you know? I’m not sure how much I trust you yet.”

It was a logical answer, and one Henry had expected, and he still had to laugh a little.

“You’re alone in a car with me, though. I’m not sure that’s something you do with someone you don’t trust. Especially at your age.”

“It’s not like that,” Dipper said. “I trust that you won’t hurt me, or anything. It’s just… I don’t know how you’ll react, you know? It’s kind of really weird, and most people we’ve told haven’t… taken it so well.”

Henry nodded, accepting that, and gave a reassuring smile before he sat back to consider a next question.

“Did Stan really fake his death once?”

Dipper laughed, and the air lightened.

“Oh, yeah, that. That’s a long story…”

And the rest of the drive went by with less loaded conversation.

When they arrived, and as Henry locked up the car, Dipper gave him a questioning look.

“You didn’t ask about the… um…” he said, and gestured vaguely at himself.

“No, I didn’t,” Henry said.

That was the right answer, apparently, judging from the smile spreading across Dipper’s face.

The rest of the day was spent with near-silence between them, as Dipper found a book he liked and sat down with that, and Henry did his job. A few hours into it, Dipper moved to the floor, after someone apparently took his chair. Henry felt like giving them a good talking to, but Dipper told him not to.

“It’s fine,” he said. “I don’t mind laying on the carpet, and I don’t really like rooms with lots of people anyways. Just leave it alone.”

Henry let it go, but there was still something heart breaking about the way the kid hid himself away in a corner, as if he was scared people would step on him. As the day went on, he also seemed to be slowly getting worse. When Henry walked over to him with a bite to eat during lunch break, it was to find him curled up and staring at nothing, face as blank as it ever got.

“Hey,” he said as he sat down beside him. “How are you holding up?”

Most of the quiet creepiness stayed in Dippers eyes, but at least he blinked, and he looked up at Henry and shrugged before he went back to staring. Henry tried to follow his gaze, but lost it somewhere in the direction of the computers.

“Anything in particular you’re looking at?”

“That man is going to die,” Dipper said, and nodded towards an old man at the closest row of tables.

He said it so casually it took Henry a second to process what had been said at all. He said it as if predicting a man’s death was no different from pointing out the colour of his clothes.

“What?”

“He’s going to die.”

Henry looked at the man for a few seconds. He was a bit of a regular at the library, mostly coming in to borrow the computers. He looked no worse for the wear than he always did.

“Why do you say that?” he said.

Dipper hummed a little, and tilted his head as if he was looking for words.

“He’s…” he hesitated again. “He’s got a shadow. Like… like he’s closer to… like he’s… almost missing something. Or something.” He bit his lip and looked down, sighed as if he gave up on finding a good description. “I don’t know,” he said, and shrugged.

Henry hummed and handed him a sandwich, which he took, taking care never to touch Henry’s fingers.

“Can you usually tell?”

Dipper shrugged again, without looking up.

“Sometimes. ‘S not always right. Sometimes they can get help. And it’s not like it’s fate or anything, I can’t tell if someone’s gonna be hit by a car, but if they’re sick? Sometimes, I can tell.”

Henry had to squash down an urge to give the kid a hug. Dipper did not look sad, exactly, but there was a creeping emptiness to him, and a sense that there had been a silent battle against it at one point, which he had lost. It was obvious that his condition was worsening by the minute, and Henry wanted to _help_ , but he had no idea what to do.

“Are you sure you want to be here?” he asked, and Dipper looked up. “I mean, I could call home for you, if you want? Have someone pick you up?”

“No!” The answer was as sudden and intense as the fear and begging appearing in Dipper’s eyes at the suggestion. “No, please, I want to stay with you. There’s not really anyone at home, and there’s nothing to do there, and I don’t want to be alone, and I’ll be nice and quiet, I promise, I just want to stay with you. Please?”

“Hey, hey, It’s okay,” Henry said, and held up his hands. The urge to hug and comfort resurfaced strongly, and he had to remind his subconscious that Dipper did in fact not want touch, and respecting that was the least he could do. “It’s okay,” he said again. “Of course you can stay with me. I just wanted to make sure.”

Dipper smiled faintly and relaxed. After that, there were no more words between them, as Dipper was a little too gone to initiate conversation, and Henry tried to work through the chill running up his spine, tried to remind himself that he liked this kid despite the creepiness, despite the fact that he sometimes did things no one should be able to do.

This was Gravity Falls, where magic was more real than anywhere else, and there were more important issues than Henry’s unease.

Once break was over, Henry went back to work, and this time, Dipper followed him around. Not followed him as in bothered him, but he stayed in sight and slightly out of reach at all times, quietly. It was almost as if he had gained a new shadow, and by the lack of reaction from anyone else, he might as well have. It got to the point where, an hour or so later, he almost forgot Dipper was there at all. Even his footsteps were soundless.

When Mabel came and picked her brother up, later, and gave Henry a _very_ nice thank-you kiss, he was almost surprised to lose the heavy feeling of being watched.


	4. There are secrets in this place

Henry always felt like he was being watched, these days. Or, well, not exactly. Most of the time, he felt nothing of the sort, but every once in a while he would be standing alone in the kitchen of the former Mystery Shack, and he would suddenly be sure he was not alone. Sometimes he would turn around for a second, and upon turning back, find something out of place. Sometimes he would smell something like burning skin, clearly enough to make him hold his breath, but no one else around would react.

He did his best to ignore it, to pretend nothing was happening, and just go on while resisting the impulse to look for the watcher. Once, he asked Mabel about it, and she assured him there was nothing to worry about, and he tried, he tried so hard to pretend he did not jump at the smallest sound now in ways he never had before.

It was bad, but it was not enough to eclipse the fact that he was happier now than he had ever been before.

\---

Mabel Pines was a child in the body of an adult woman.

Not literally, of course, though after having lived in Gravity Falls for several months, he doubted it would be impossible. Mabel was just, childlike.

She wore glitter and colour explosions that made her look like a tall five-year-old from a distance. She got excited about ice cream and children’s movies, and she dragged Henry along for laser tag more than once.

She was so _absolute_ in her emotions, feeling everything all the way. If she was happy, she was beaming like the sun, jumping around as if she did not quite know what to do with herself. If she was sad, she was devastated, quiet and distraught, though luckily often easily distractible.

He found himself wondering why, when he watched her play with the children in the park, why she sometimes struck him as someone forced to grow up too fast.

\---

They called them _The Twins_ sometimes, the Fallers. They were Dipper and Mabel sometimes, sure, but often, they were the Twins.

Sometimes the Pines twins, sometimes the Mystery Twins, sometimes just The Twins, but it was everywhere and always, without any kind of justification. Henry could make very little sense of it.

As far as he had seen, the siblings were more like a young mother and her son, or a protective older sister with her little brother, never similar enough to warrant a title like that. Honestly, Dipper was almost thirteen (had been almost thirteen since the day they first met, but that never seemed to register properly,) and Mabel was closing in on twenty one! Yet the Fallers consistently insisted on calling them twins.

In the end, he asked Wendy about it. He caught her one night after she had just gotten home from fighting a manticore, and he knew she would be too tired to spin up a good distraction, and grateful enough for ready-made dinner to not brush it off completely, and he asked her about this one weird tendency among the many of her hometown.

She chewed her cheek and gave him a look as if she was conflicted.

“It’s kinda an inside joke,” she said. “There’s a reason for it, but it involves a lot of things that’ll be hard to explain, and you should probably ask them, not me. It’s their stories. But honestly? You might want to leave it alone for a bit longer.”

“They have a lot of secrets, don’t they?” Henry said with a smile, meaning nothing and everything by it.

Wendy made a “nh” noise and a grimace and reached over the table to put her hand on top of his.

“Look,” she said, “the Pines family’s a little weird, but they’re good people, okay? I promise. And Mabel’s been through a lot ’a heartbreak over the years, so they’ve got reasons to not be so good at opening up to people. Just… be patient with them, yeah? You’re already doing so well, I’m sure they’ll tell you everything eventually, but it’s not my place to tell you first.”

Henry nodded easily, and they settled down, and he once again had to reassess his view of the world slightly.

It seemed that in this town, even the most seemingly superficial thing could have strings tying to the heart of a matter he had no way to sense, not to mention see the extent of.

He had to wonder what kind of damage could make cracks reach that far.

\---

Stanford Pines, known as Ford by practically everyone he knew, was one of the smartest people Henry had ever met.

He was also reasonably famous, being at the very front of scientific discovery post-transcendence. He had even won several very prestigious prizes for his work around the world, and one had to ask why he spent so much of his time in the basement of a rusty old tourist-trap-turned-library.

To spend time with family, of course, was the answer. It was an answer that had raised quite a few eyebrows in its time.

At first glance, Ford had very little in common with the rest of his family, and in fact never went out of his way to spend time with them. Unless someone actually came down to fish him out, he would spend his days holed up in the basement doing who-knows-what.

It took a while before Henry realized the reality of it.

The Pines family was strange in more ways than consisting of two old men, their great niece and nephew, and a few honourable members. They were different from more normal people in other ways than being a brilliant scientist, an old conman, sunshine in human form and the strange little brother. They were comfortable in each other’s presence.

The first time Henry met Ford, the first time he had dinner at the Library, did not feel like a first time.

The air in the room was so familial, the smiles were so easy, he did not feel like a stranger in someone else’s house, he felt as if he had come home.

Ford Pines as well, despite his reputation as a reclusive and eccentric man, and despite not being up and about as much as he should, was no stranger to his family. Maybe he sometimes used words no one else at the table could understand, and maybe he immediately fell out of the conversation once Mabel started talking about colour theory (admittedly everyone did), but it was never a problem, and they never let it stand between them.

Even after that, Henry’s respect for the man nearly doubled when he saw how he was with Dipper.

Because Ford asked Dipper if he wanted to help out with whatever it was he was working on at the time, and the way he asked was not the way one asks to indulge a curious child. He asked the way one would ask an equal, someone from whom one both expects and appreciates valuable help, and it was clear from the smile on Dipper’s face that the appreciation went both ways.

Going back to his uncles’ house later that day, with the warm memories of smiles curled around his heart, Henry wondered how even a house that open and friendly could feel as if it was keeping secrets from him.

\---

Three months passed by before he got the answer he never wanted to every question he had.


	5. Night terrors

Henry woke up to the feeling of being watched.

Screwing his eyes closed, he nuzzled a little closer to Mabel, and tried to ignore the feeling of something at his back, of something dark and cold just outside the reach of his senses. There was nothing there. There would never be anything there, and sure, he had never gotten this during the night before, but it was still a familiar feeling by now, and there was never. Anything. There.

He kept it up for a couple of minutes before he gave up and opened his eyes to look around. His mind expected nothing, and his emotions expected death itself, but none of him was prepared for what he saw.

The room was dark, but there was still enough light to make things out relatively clearly. At the nightstand, 00:23 blinked, colouring everything red, and there was _something_ standing at the foot of the bed.

It was vague, as though unfocused, and human shaped and blank. It looked at him, and it had no eyes to look with, no face at all that he could make out, but it _looked_ at him, and his heart stopped at the sight of it.

He was instantly awake, heart pounding in his throat like a jackhammer, and he might have screamed a little. He shot up and scooted back to the headboard of the bed, never taking his eyes of the _thing_ by his feet, and Mabel stirred beside him.

“Wha… Henry?” she asked, still half-asleep.

“What the fuck,” he said, too scared to be properly coherent. “What the _fuck_ is that? What the _hell_? What the-”

Mabel did not look very scared. She just breathed “oh, no” and dropped her head into her hands.

“Mabel!? What!?”

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “Oh, Henry, I’m so sorry. This is all my fault.”

“Mabel?”

She looked up at him and there was quiet pleading in her eyes.

“I should have told you earlier, but I- he didn’t- I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. It’s okay, okay? He won’t hurt you, I promise.”

Looking at the blurry, staring… thing, at the end of the bed, and feeling his heart thundering in his chest, Henry had a hard time believing that, but if Mabel said so…

“I just-” he said, trying to calm his breathing, “I just want to know what this is.”

Mabel sighed, deeply and sadly, and she slung her legs over the edge of the bed to sit. The figure at the foot of the bed turned its head to follow her.

“It’s Dipper, okay?” she said, without turning to look at him, and the words struck him like knives. “I know he looks… weird, right now, but it’s him.”

She reached an arm out towards the figure, and Henry did not want to see any of the boy he had come to love in that terrifying thing, but now that he knew, it was almost too obvious. The figure was the right size and had the right colours, and the staring was definitely all Dipper, but he was inhuman and featureless enough to be terrifying, like the empty husk of a human being.

“Come here, bro,” Mabel said, and Dipper walked over and crawled onto her lap, every movement radiating _wrongness_ on a basic level. She started stroking his head, pulling fingers through hair that was barely real, and he nestled close and sat still like the dead. After a little while, he started coming back into focus.

Henry slowly loosened his white-knuckled grip on the bedsheets, and moved up to sit beside the two, fear still clogging his throat.

“Mabel,” he said, and he tried his best to keep his voice from shaking. “I haven’t asked, because I figured it wasn’t my business, and I thought someone would tell me sooner or later, but I want an explanation now.”

She looked up at him, then nodded. On her lap, Dipper looked like Dipper now, only slightly blurry around the edges, but unmoving, glassy-eyed and still, and even though Henry had seen him almost like this before, on the really bad days, it somehow seemed worse now that he had seen what lay beyond it.

“Have you ever touched him?” she asked, and then, before he could answer, “No, of course you haven’t. He wouldn’t have let you, and you’re too good with him to go against that.” Then she grabbed his hand and put it against Dipper’s cheek.

Henry was too surprised to protest, and every word died on his tongue as skin touched icy skin, his heart crawled up into his throat, and a chill ran up his spine. It felt like touching a corpse. It felt like pushing his hand into the dark in the back of the fridge and finding something unknown and dead. It made his skin crawl.

But this was Dipper. This was Mabel, who was looking at him as if she was scared he would run away and never come back, looked as if she dared him to, looked as if she was already bracing herself for the heartbreak. This was two people he already loved as much as anything, despite only having known them for a few months, and he swallowed his fear and revulsion, and took a steadying breath.

“He’s my little brother,” Mabel said, relaxing a little as he did. “He’s my little brother, but… just by five minutes.”

She looked down, and the pieces finally started falling into place in his head, and he did not like the picture he could see.

“They call us twins for a reason, okay? We are. At least we were, before the…” She bit her lip, drew a breath, and held her brother just a tiny bit closer. “He died, when we were twelve, almost thirteen. He’s been like this since then.”

“He’s a ghost,” Henry said, and he meant it as a question, but it came out as a statement, and he hoped, hoped, hoped against hope that she would tell him he was wrong. She only smiled.

“I must seem pathetic to you,” she said, tears at the back of her voice, “clinging on to him like this.” She hugged Dipper even closer to her, and Dipper hugged back mechanically. “But I- I don’t see why I should have to let him go. He doesn’t want to go, and I don’t want him to go, and I mean, he’s- he’s harmless, right? He’s never hurt anyone. He just wants to stick around me until I can come with him.” She chuckled a little and buried her face in her brother’s hair, and all Henry could think of was how cold that must be. “I guess he’s a little obsessed with me.”

The deathly silence that followed was the only reason either of them heard Dipper mumble something like a complaint at that.

“…I didn’t catch that?” Mabel said.

“’m not obsessed,” Dipper said, sounding like nothing so much as an annoyed and half-asleep child. “I’m _fixated_. There’s a difference.”

“Whatever,” Mabel said, and looked fondly down at her brother. “You waking up?”

He blinked sluggishly up at her, then blinked at Henry a few times before looking back to his sister and nodding, looking just as human as he ever had.

“Mhm,” he said, and then, “um, I’m sorry. About the… staring.”

“It’s fine,” she said, as she smiled and ruffled his hair. “It’s not your fault. Now. It’s really late, and I’m tired, so I’m going back to sleep. I think you should stay with me.”

The brief tightening of Henry’s chest at the thought of having _that_ in bed with them as he slept matched the alarm in Dipper’s eyes.

“Wha- Mabel!” Dipper said, pushing back to better look his sister in the eyes. “That’s really not necess-”

Mabel put a hand over his mouth.

“Bro, we both know that if you try staying away, you’ll be back to staring the second I’m asleep. You almost always get all zoned out when I’m sleeping.”

“I can go out,” he muttered from under her hand, and she sighed.

“No,” she said, “I’m not letting you spend another night in the forest. It’s not safe. You’re staying in bed tonight, with me.”

“Mabel!” Dipper pulled her hand away from his mouth and looked at her even harder for a moment before his eyes flickered over to Henry. “It’s not just your decision, okay?”

She opened her mouth to argue, and then seemed to reconsider it and turned to Henry instead.

“I’ll keep him on my side of the bed,” she said. “You won’t even notice he’s there.”

Henry looked at her, looked at the familiar challenge in her eyes, directed at him because, he realized, it was directed at the world. Mabel challenged the world every moment of her life, dared it to speak up against how she lived, as it had so many times before. He looked at Dipper, whose eyes still held a glimpse of tired hope, barely present after having been beaten down so many times. The pieces were still falling into place in his mind.

The secrets, the half-truths, the hesitations at seemingly random moments. The strange looks people sometimes gave him whenever he spoke of Dipper, and the way people seemed to ignore the kid in public. The way even the siblings’- the _twins’_ own great-uncles rarely looked straight at him. The things that moved on their own, the cold rooms and feelings of being watched, which he now recognized as obvious signs of a haunting, that only happened whenever Dipper was not around.

Why had he not seen this earlier?

Henry almost started laughing. It was too crazy, all of it.

“Won’t that be too cold?” was what came out of his mouth.

Mabel’s eyes softened into one of her radiant smiles, and Dipper sighed in something that might be relief. Henry almost started laughing again. Why was a ghost even breathing in the first place?

“Nah,” she said, “he warms up pretty fast,” and he tried not to mention how creepy that sounded.

“Alright,” he said, “I don’t think I was getting any more sleep tonight anyways.”

Mabel let out a big yawn then, and lay down under the covers with her back to Henry, holding around her brother as if he was a big teddy bear. After a few seconds, Henry lay back down as well. It really did seem as if there was only the two of them on the bed.

The racing of his heart had quieted, and he was able to think a little clearer. A few pieces of the conversation came to mind now, where they had passed him by unnoticed, earlier. Carefully, he sidled up against Mabel and put an arm around her.

“For what it’s worth,” he said, “I don’t think you’re pathetic at all.”

He tried not to react as a cold, dead hand closed around his wrist.

Eventually, he did fall asleep.


	6. Talk over breakfast

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning. This is the last of my pre-written chapters. Updates are most likely going to slow down a lot from here on.

Henry woke up early that morning with perfect memory of the events the night before.

He was still curled around Mabel from behind, and when he shifted his arms, he noticed he still had a hand clamped around his wrist, though it was not all that cold anymore.

Slowly, he got up on one elbow and peeked over his girlfriend at the child who lay beside her, who had a hand locked around his.

Dipper looked perfectly human now, and the temperature of his hand was cool, but not icy. One could be forgiven for thinking he was just sleeping.

Of course, looking closer, there was no breath in him, no movement behind his eyelids, no pulse through his veins. He lay still as the dead, and that was more literal than anyone should be comfortable with.

Henry felt a chill run up his spine at the thought, and he looked down and tried to free his hand. A second later, Dipper let go on his own, and Henry looked up to meet a set of impassive eyes.

“Good morning,” Dipper said.

“Good morning,” Henry answered automatically, and then, “I thought you were asleep.”

Dipper closed his eyes and shook his head minutely.

“I don’t sleep,” he said.

“Huh,” Henry answered. “Sounds like it could get boring.”

Dipper broke the blank expression with a small smile and a shrug.

“Sometimes. I _can_ kind of turn my mind off, but…”

“ _That_ happens?” Henry asked, gesturing towards the foot of the bed in an attempt to indicate the night’s events.

Dipper cringed.

“Yeah.”

Henry took a deep breath, then he climbed over Mabel, careful not to wake her, and walked over to the wardrobe to get dressed.

When he looked back, Dipper had sat up and placed the covers back around his sister. Mabel was still deep in dreamland, and Dipper watched her fondly.

Henry got a feeling he spent a lot of time watching her as if she was his world.

Then Dipper looked up and asked him, “What?” and he realized he had been staring.

“Sorry,” he said. “It’s just… she said you usually zone out when she sleeps?”

“By definition she’s always asleep,” Dipper said. “How would she know?”

Henry had to laugh at that, and the air lightened a bit.

“Come on,” Dipper said as he stood up, “I’ll make you breakfast.”

With that, he turned and walked through the door. Without opening it.

Henry blinked a few times before he followed him.

Dipper’s footsteps down the hallway were silent. Not quiet, like a cat’s, but silent, as if they were picked out of a muted film. He moved like any living person would, but the air was not disturbed by his passing. Motes of dust swirled near invisible through the air, and where Henry passed them, they took the way around him in a curve and a twirl, but they ignored Dipper entirely.

They entered the kitchen and Dipper immediately started making coffee and getting eggs out of the fridge to fry. Henry sat down at the table.

He watched the kid work. So obviously not quite right, now that he knew, but still so alive in a sense.

He looked down at his hands.

He took a deep breath.

He looked up.

“So,” he said. “How does that all work?”

“How does what work?” Dipper glanced over his shoulder.

“The… ghost, thing.”

“Ah,” Dipper said. “Well, it’s complicated. How much do you know already?”

“Um,” Henry said, and he tried to think back to the few things he had actually been able to pick up about preternatural matters. “Not much? I mean, I know you have to die first, but other than that, I don’t know how much I can trust. There was something about levels, I think.”

“Hah,” Dipper said, “Well, it might be better to start from a blank slate. You can definitely forget the thing about levels. As if it could ever be that simple.”

Dipper finished frying the eggs about the same time coffee was done, and he got a plate and a cup for Henry and one for himself.

“They’ll tell you,” he said, “that ghosts form when someone dies a violent death, or when someone dies with unfinished business. That’s… not true. They’re usually the strongest ones, fixated by the violence and obsessed with the unfinished business, but almost everything leaves a ghost.”

“Really?” Henry said, and he had to stop himself from looking around the room for them.

“Yup,” Dipper answered. “A ghost is basically an imprint or a memory of something or someone who’s died. They form almost constantly. Luckily for everything else, most of them are really weak and fade away quickly, but some stick around. Some aren’t really just memories either. The ghosts people usually talk about are the ones that keep their souls.”

“And you’re one of those?” Henry asked.

“I should hope so,” Dipper said, raising an eyebrow. “Memories are nice enough, but they can’t actually think much for themselves. I’m practically a person. Er, not that every besouled ghost is that lucky.”

“And that depends on what? Power?”

Dipper tilted his head.

“Well… yes and no. You see, there are lots of different ways ghosts can be powerful. The simplest one is age. A new ghost has a certain level of power, and that naturally grows with age.”

He shifted his position and looked into his coffee cup for a few seconds. Henry started to wonder whether a kid that age really should have coffee, whether it mattered anymore when the kid was dead, whether ghosts should drink coffee, whether ghosts _could_ drink coffee, and if so, why they would.

“I’ve been dead for about eight years now, and there has been a difference, though not a big one. You don’t really start to notice it until around the second decade, and it doesn’t usually get really big until about a century.”

“Oh yeah,” Henry said, “I think I heard something about a hundred years old ghost up at the Northwest mansion?”

“Hundred and fifty, and kind of. You see, the thing about him was that he died cursing the family with his final breath. That works as a crude kind of blood sacrifice powering an actual curse, which, fused with a vengeful, obsessed and angry ghost, makes… that.”

“Oh,” Henry said, “uh, wow.”

“Yeah,” Dipper answered with a lopsided smile. “Don’t die cursing anything with your final breath, okay? It just makes trouble for everyone.”

“I’ll try to remember that.”

They smiled at each other over the table for a bit before Dipper sat up straight.

“Anyways,” he said, “the other two keys to power are fixation and obsession, which are not the same thing I don’t care what Mabel says. Fixation is… complicated. Basically, ghosts live slightly aside from the world of the living. We have a hard time influencing it at all, or even being seen, but we’re still tied to it. Those ties are the fixations. The stronger your fixation is, the less power you need to do anything.

There was an old couple down at the abandoned convenience store. They were fixated on the store, giving them a lot of power within the walls, but also keeping them from ever leaving.

My fixation is on Mabel, and it’s strong enough that it’s possible for me to talk to some people like this without using any power at all, but most people still can’t see me much. Also, since these things are stupidly variable, it also means I have to be practically glued to her at times.”

“Huh,” Henry said. “That explains a lot. How come _I_ can see you this clearly, though?”

Dipper gave a hopeless shrug.

“I wish I knew. These things vary to hell and back. Even you can’t see me all the time. Only Mabel can do that.”

Silence fell again for a bit as they both finished up their breakfast.

“So,” Henry said, “You said you were really strongly fixated. Does that mean you could be really powerful?”

Dipper gave a nod, which turned into a half-shrug.

“Yeah, well, kind of. That gets us into obsession, which is where ghosts actually gets their power _from_. To simplify, ghosts get their power from emotions, particularly strong emotions. Unfortunately, these emotions tend to manifest as a strong obsession with something or someone, and it does bad things to the ghost’s mind.

Like, the couple at the Dusk 2 Dawn? Completely obsessed with teenagers. They couldn’t stand them. Killed them whenever they got a chance. I used to go out there and talk to them sometimes, and the only reason I could was that I died a few days before I turned thirteen. One week later, they never would’ve let me in.

Then there’s the girl at the clock tower. Her obsession is a little different in that it’s based in happiness instead of hatred or sadness or whatever, so she’s not really dangerous, but it’s so strong she isn’t even lucid. You can try talking to her, but it’s like arguing with a dog.”

“And you?” Henry asked. “You’re not obsessed?”

Dipper gave a wry smile.

“Maybe a little, but it’s usually not enough to be a problem.”

Henry nodded, and tried to swallow away the lump in his throat, tried to pretend he was really okay with all this, but Dipper noticed. Of course he noticed. Why did he have to pick today of all days to be this clear-headed and observant?

“…You’re still scared, aren’t you?”

Henry opened his mouth to deny it before he stopped himself. The kid deserved the truth, at least.

“Just a little,” he said, and tried to smile reassuringly. “I… just need some time to get used to this, okay? All I’ve really heard about ghosts before has been horror movies and such.”

“Oh, you mean the ‘I love you, so I’m gonna kill you so we can be together forever’ kind?” Dipper asked jokingly.

Henry conceded to that with half a smile. Dipper looked down at his hands.

“Well,” he said, “It’s not like there’s nothing to it. Strong obsessions really can do that to ghosts, but I won’t, okay? I promise. I’d never hurt her. Or anyone else. I just don’t want to go alone, and I don’t want to leave her alone either, so I figured I’d just… wait for her?”

Henry nodded and took a few deep breaths.

It was still creepy, very creepy, to hear a child talk about waiting for his sister’s death, but creepy was not always dangerous. It could have been a lot worse.

Of course, Mabel chose that moment to enter the room with a “Morning, boys!” which lightened the mood considerably.

“I made you breakfast,” Dipper said, and gestured towards the eggs on the stove.

Mabel swaggered past him and swept him up in a one-armed embrace on the way.

“Best brother,” she said with her face smoshed into his hair, and he laughed and swatted her away.

It was all so _normal_. The omnipresent familial warmth of this house filled the room like it always did, and Henry had no choice but to relax into it, to breathe it in and wonder at how he was allowed to have this in the first place. Honestly, what was he scared of? It was not like anything had changed, aside from the fact that he knew now. If he could get used to moving to Gravity Falls in the first place, he could get used to this.

Then Stan entered the room, wearing half a nightgown and a face full of morning grump, and answered the offer of breakfast by pinning Henry with a glare and saying, “don’t you have work?”

Henry looked up at the clock, realized he was an hour late, and ran out the door swearing.


End file.
